An Empirical Study On Effects Of Task-Based Output On English Vocabulary Acquisition For Non-English Majors

An important task for second language learners is to expand their vocabulary, especially for non-English majors. This thesis investigates the effect of task-based output teaching instruction on English vocabulary acquisition. It relies the theoretical foundation on Swain’s "Comprehensible Output Hypothesis","The Theory of Depths Processing", proposed by Craik and Lockhart and the "Involvement Load Hypothesis", formed by Laufer and Hulstijn. The subjects are freshmen of non-English major in Zhixing College of Hubei University, which is among third-rate universities of Wuhan in China. Natural classes are randomly selected as controlled class and experimental class. The designs for teaching are quite different in controlled class and experimental class so as to study the different effects on vocabulary acquisition. There are64students taking part in this study originally, but only58of them participate the whole experiments and generate valid scores. The software SPSS20.0is applied to analyze final scores and the conclusions are drawn as follows:1. Scores in experimental class are obviously better than that in controlled class in both immediate and prolonged posttests. Furthermore, students in experimental class outperform ones in controlled class in both receptive and productive knowledge. Such results demonstrate that task-based output teaching method is more efficient for English vocabulary acquisition than traditional teaching approach.2. Receptive vocabulary is in evidently positive proportion to productive vocabulary. According to receptive and productive scores, it can be concluded that task-based output teaching method functions slightly on productive vocabulary but it can consolidate and remain memory of the vocabulary.3. The differences of girls’scores between controlled and experimental classes are not obvious, whereas the differences of boys’are quite significant. Thus, task-based output teaching method plays a better role in enhancing the effect of boys’vocabulary acquisition.Above all, the results of this study support some evidence to related theory and provide some useful suggestions to English learners. Meanwhile, the conclusions propose some helpful enlightenment to improve college English teaching.